


Striving for Perfection

by I_can_only_imagine



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Amnesiac Jason Todd, Angst, Assassin Jason Todd, Assassin stuff, Canon-Typical Violence, Damian Wayne Needs a Hug, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd is a good brother, Jason Trains Damian, Non-Sexual Bathing, Post Young Justice Season 3, Training, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24382372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_can_only_imagine/pseuds/I_can_only_imagine
Summary: Damian is frustrated that his teacher always wins during their training sessions, and that he stops him from winning battles with others.He believes if he wants to be a true al Ghul, he needs to become perfect. His teacher disagrees.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Talia al Ghul & Damian Wayne, Talia al Ghul & Jason Todd
Comments: 17
Kudos: 380





	Striving for Perfection

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr @what-if i-imagine

Damian grunted as he hit the ground again. Just as all the other times he had been knocked down, he sprung right back up without hesitation and faced his teacher again.

The young assassin eyes him carefully with a raised eyebrow. He seemed no more impressed by Damian’s stubborn refusal to stay down than he had any of the other times. And just as all the other times, the assassin finished his always silent assessment of Damian’s physical state and turned to Talia.

Damian rushed forward while the teen’s face was turned away, but both his bokken and fist were easily caught and held still without him so much as glancing back.

“If he wishes to continue then let him,” Talia assured the silent teacher. “He must learn somehow when it is time to give up.”

His teacher gave a small nod and turned back to Damian, roughly pushing him back to put a yard of distance between them.

There were many things that frustrated the young al Ghul about his teacher. The teacher had been around since the day he was born, and had been one of the first to ever hold him, but he had never spoken a word. As the years went on, his mother explained that the boy was completely catatonic when she found him, and had remained that way for a very long time.

His mother never told him what jolted the boy out of his catatonic state, or why even after seven years he still sometimes slipped back under and when lucid remained silent. He thought he might have heard his voice once, speaking in a hushed tone to his mother, but he wasn’t sure anymore.

Another thing he found extremely frustrating was the way his teacher carried himself. It was filled with so much sorrow, wonder and indifference. He had only seen a few expressions on his face that were not microscopic. Damian was always unsure if it was due to his mother’s training, or some other thing from the boy’s past that his amnesiatic brain would possibly never remember.

Then there was the thing that frustrated Damian above all else. It made his blood boil and he gnashed his teeth and rushed forward again, raising his bokken to strike.

His teacher treated him like a kid.

Ever since his birth when the boy was nine, he had treated Damian as if he were delicate, fragile. As if he weren't the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, the grandson of Ra al Ghul. He found it more than frustrating, it was infuriating.

Damian had aged through his infant and toddler years at an accelerated speed due to the nature of his birth but had quickly slowed to the normal age progression, leaving him now physically ten when he was technically only seven. Physically speaking, the boy his mother called his teacher was only six years older than him at the most. He had no powers, unless you counted the multiple times he had to be thrown into the Lazarus Pit after some of his missions resulting in a quicker healing process as a power, which Damian did not. He was small for his age even with the growth Lazarus had tried to force him into, his muscle was lean and though Damian knew how damaging one of his punches could be first hand after watching it shatter a man’s skull, he was nowhere near intimidating.

And yet this boy, this fool his mother called her greatest warrior, had the audacity to treat him, grandson of the Demon's Head, as a child.

He went easy on him in training unless his mother prompted him not to. He fought with only his hands while forcing Damian to use a bokken. He jumped into every fight Damian picked with the other assassins and teachers, putting it to a swift end in whatever way he could then personally tended to Damian’s wounds as if he couldn’t do it himself.

Damian tried to channel his anger and frustrations the way his mother had taught him into every strike of his bokken. His teacher effortlessly dodged every attack.

When he saw a split second entry, his teacher snapped forward, using one hand to meet Damian’s bokken with an open palmed uppercut as the other hand’s heel struck Damian's chest. All air was pushed from his lungs in a painful surge, and for a second he was almost sure the boy had pushed his soul entirely from his body.

Damian's back collided with the ground, his neck giving a snap when his head bounced from the force. His bokken had left his hand before his descent,and he now found himself staring up at blank, almost unseeing eyes, with the business end of his bokken pressed right below his throat.

Damian was about to reach up and push the wooden sword away so he could stand again when his mother’s voice stopped him.

“Damian, that’s enough,” she snapped.

“But mother-” he tried to protest but she cut him off.

“You have lost fifteen matches in ten minutes. It is fair to say that will be enough for today.”

“I can keep going-”

“Did I not just say enough?”

Damian gulped down any words that tried to escape him after that, glaring with a vengeance at the teacher who still stood over him.

“Alwarda,” his mother said, causing the boy to turn his gaze back to her. “Your assistance is not needed for the remainder of tonight. You are dismissed.”

The boy nodded and stepped away from Damian. He offered both the mother and son a small bow of respect before disappearing inside with the bokken still in hand.

Damian had bathed and tended to his wounds alone, brooding in his defeat. His mother often told him the way he brooded reminded her of his father, who happened to be an american billionaire completely unaware of his existence. He would never say it to her face, but he always thought during these moments that she was wrong. He brooded like her as well.

After he was dressed comfortably for the uneventful evening ahead, one of the servants came to his door to inform him his mother was waiting for him.

It did not take long to find her. He knew when it came to their private dinners, they rarely ever ate in the actual dining room, or with his grandfather and other members of their family. This night in particular he found her in her meditation room with her favorite incense burning and her eyes closed. A pot of oxblood soup sat between her and another mat with two empty bowls and spoons beside it.

In moments like these, he would enjoy just staring at his mother in the awe and respect she deserved. She was more deadly than anyone he had ever known in his short life time, but it was sometimes hard to forget when she was sitting there, looking so beautiful and at ease.

Damian always wondered if he would inherit any of that beauty. Sometimes prayed that he would, though he would never tell anyone that.

“If you keep standing there, the soup will get cold,” his mother informed him without opening her eyes or moving a muscle.

He obeyed the silent order, making his way over to the mat to sit in a cross legged mirror of her position. He served up both bowls, presenting his mother’s to her with a bow of his head. She took it with a small chuckle.

"You fought hard today, I figured you deserved your favorite,” she said as he tried to control himself while taking down spoonful after spoonful of soup.

“But I lost,” he said, almost baffled. The loss after loss would have been considered intolerable by his grandfather. Unacceptable. Not the makings of a true al Ghul heir.

“Loss is inevitable,” his mother said easily. “Without it, there is no way you would learn.”

Damian tried to let her words sink in, tried to learn the lesson she was trying to teach, but it wouldn’t stick. He had lost fifteen times to a foul blooded boy right in front of her. How could she act as if his failure meant nothing?

He filed the question away for another day and accepted the moment for what it was. He ate three bowls of the soup before deciding he was satisfied, and went into meditation, allowing the scents of the incense, soup and his mother to overcome his senses. He let all his thoughts go by as if he were watching waves on a beach from afar, letting them go to be dealt with in a different time.

As much as they had helped to ease him in the moment, the soup and meditation’s effects did not last long.

The next morning he had woken up and spent sunrise until noon doing non stop training. He avoided his mother the best he could, sure that the shame must have sunk in by now, even opting to eat his lunch with the other assassins.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what it had felt like each time he hit the ground. The distasteful sound of his body colliding with the dirt. The way his teacher would stare down at him with the unreadable expression and expertly masked emotion. The way his mother had snapped when he found for a sixteenth round.

He was tired, and his body ached with sore muscles that didn’t want to work no matter how late in the day it had gotten as he kept up his training as intense as ever. His mind blurred the hours into minutes and the minutes into seconds, his attention laser focused on getting better.

He reminded himself over and over like a mantra that he would never be good enough the way he was. That a true al Ghul, a true heir to the Demon’s Head, is so much better than this. He trained until it became hard to breath, then said air was for the weak and kept going.

As the sun started to set, he took a brisk shower and toweled off, dressing in his copy of the outfit he had seen the assassins of the League wear to dinner. It was more casual and comfortable than their usual uniforms, but still displayed their place in the League based on color and material. Damian’s was made from the finest silks just as all his other clothing and was green to remind everyone of his biological superiority to them.

With his katana resting on his hip, and his green hood pulled up, he melted into the crowd of tired assassins as they filed into the dinning hall.

He took his serving off food, as always pleased with how well his grandfather fed his warriors and took a seat at a fairly crowded table. The moment he was seated, everyone cleared away from the table besides one assassin, even as his little friends tried to pull him away.

“I’m not moving just because some demon brat decided this was his table,” the assassin said.

“Just move,” one of his friends said. “You don’t want to provoke him.”

“And why not? Didn’t you hear how badly he got his ass kicked yesterday during his training. From what I heard, he came out of the training center looking like absolute shit,” the assassin laughed. “I bet any idiot with two thumbs could beat him.”

“Then do it.”

All the assassins in the room slowly turned to look towards Damian, who had finished almost all of his food already while the assassin was talking.

“What?” the assassin snapped. “What did you say to me?”

“I said do it,” Damian glared at him. “You think you can beat me? Then do it.”

“Let it go,” one of his friends tried, but he brushed her off.

The man stood and marched over, his tomahawk already in his hand. When he brought it down, Damian was able to dodge it, taking advantage of the time it would take to pull it out of the wood as he hopped up onto the table and drew his katana.

The tomahawk came flying at him and he dodged it again while moving forward in one fluid motion to sink his katana into the man’s shoulder. As any good member of the League, he didn’t even flinch from the piercing cut of the blade and got to work on trying to cut Damian down.

The battle was not long by any means, but it had its fair share of blood. The man was surely going to bleed to death if he took any more trauma from Damian’s blade, and Damian himself was littered now with gashes. The next blow was sure to be the end to either of them.

Damian had never needed the Lazarus Pit yet, but by the looks of it, he might. Then again, if he won he wouldn’t, but they would be down one assassin.

He didn’t have time to fully process his katana being roughly forced from his hand, and he wasn’t entirely sure how it happened, but the next thing he knew, the chain of an all too familiar kusarigama style fixed knife was wrapped around his wrist, slamming him down into the table with a harsh force no one else would dare to use on him even during a fight.

Damian managed to push himself up enough to take in the rest of the scene that ended his fight. He belatedly realized that the chain was not the only part of the weapon fixed on him, as he came face to face with the two blades of the weapon perfectly angled by the chains to stab into his arms at any moment.

The assassin he had been fighting was no better off, a sword trained on his neck just far enough to not cut but just close enough that any breath could cause it to. Everyone around them were covering their mouths, paralyzed by one of the few things they feared, or were scrambling to get their food and run back to their rooms.

“Red,” the assassin sputtered, staring up at the red hooded boy. “It’s not what it looks like. I wasn’t going to kill the kid!”

The red clad assassin seemed to consider the man for a moment before the tension left his body and he resheathed his sword. He waved the man away, and the man took the order to leave as a gift.

Damian prepared for the disappointed, or unimpressed, or patronizing look Red was sure to give him. He geared up to shoot a few insults at the boy and push his luck until Red snapped- which he never did, yet another insufferable aspect of his teacher.

When Red did turn to him, Damian stopped dead in his tracks. Red wasn’t looking at him in any of the ways he had expected. He didn't even look at him with pity. Instead, it was an unsheltered, raw kind of worry, fear and something else Damian didn’t recognize written plane as day in every line of his body. His eyes were a deep blue with only a hint of green around the edges, and they were fully in focus in a way Damian was so unused to.

Damian felt every ounce of anger drain from his body, quickly being replaced with a gut turning guilt he had never felt before. Because no one had ever looked at him like that before. Without a hint of disappointment or berating.

He ended up having to avert his gaze to the floor to stop himself from throwing up.

Feather gentle hands unwound the chains and coiled the weapon back up to be clipped to his belt on the other side of his hip from his katana. Without warning, the same hands lifted Damian as if he weighed nothing and carried him away from the dinning hall and to his bed room.

“Are you going to tell my mother?” Damian asked in an almost whisper, risking a glance back up at the teen. His lips had set into a hard line, the same way they did every time Damian though he might want to say something. He started to mentally panic before the assassin gave a small shake of his head.

They reached the room quickly, and Damian expected to be let down to attend to his wounds on his own. Though the red assassin his mother so deeply trusted had taken care of him after fights many times before, it had never been in the secluded comfort of his room. Always in the infirmary, training room or his mother’s office as she scolded him.

He didn’t expect it when the boy opened his bedroom door and carried Damian in. He only let him down when they reached the bathroom, where a hot bath had been pre prepared.

Damian wondered if Red had prepared it, or one of the servants at Red’s order.

“I already took a bath today,” Damian said, regaining some of his mentality.

Red gave him a hard look and nodded to the bath.

“No,” Damian said stubbornly. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was fighting it. Maybe it was the idea of being babied by a sixteen year old mute, or maybe it was because he wanted to see how far Red really could be pushed before he lost his always controlled temper.

Red nodded to the bath again with never ending patience.

Damian crossed his arms, wincing as it pulled at one of the smaller gashes, “Are you deaf and mute? I said no. I don’t need a bath.”

“Get in the bath Damian.”

It was Red’s lips that moved, but for some reason, the barrier between Damian’s eyes, ears, and brain tried to remain strong. He had never, not once, been spoken to by Red.The mixture of Red’s odd bought of full presentness and his first words to him that he could remember were enough to shock Damian into doing as he was told.

Red disappeared from the room for a moment, long enough for Damian to undress and climb into the bath. He had no qualms with his modesty around Red, no matter how old he had gotten. Red had been the one to bathe him, dress him and change him for the first few years of his life after all.

It was a few minutes before Red returned with Damian’s favorite pair of pajamas, a first aid kit, and a few wash cloths.

“Wash off the dried blood, but don’t scrub hard enough to reopen closed wounds,” Red instructed, his voice having a stuttering effect on Damian’s brain that only got worse with every word.

When he snapped out of it, Damian was quick to act, taking the washcloth and lathering it with soap so he could wash himself properly. When a bucket of water was dumped over his head, he flinched away, looking up at Red as if he had burned him.

Red only put up his hands as a show of peace and waited for Damian to calm down and move back into place where he could reach him.

With shampoo covering his hands, Red scrubbed away at Damian’s scalp, his fingers catching, massaging and scratching in the perfect way that eased Damian’s nerves. Another bucket was dumped over his head with fresh water untouched by the now grimy and bloodied bathwater, and this time Damian didn’t flinch away. He did, however, wonder how many buckets of water Red had filled for the bath ahead of time.

With the shampooing process over, Red moved on to working conditioner into Damian’s hair in the same way he had the shampoo. When he seemed satisfied, he pulled back to let it sit for a few minutes and grabbed a fresh washcloth instead to clean the deepest wound Damian had acquired in the battle.

It honestly looked worse than it was, and was the only one that would need stitches as it spanned from the center of his shoulder to his peck.

Red washed it as gently as he had done everything else with Damian that evening and applied pressure enough while cleaning to stop the bleeding. With an alcohol wipe and cleaned it even more, not letting up even when Damian flinched. Without warning, a needle and sterile thread started to run through his skin with expert ease and Damian gripped tightly to Red’s arms to not scream.

The stitches were done in a record time, and Red carefully guided him to lean his head back to rest against the rim of the tub. His head was met by a bucket of freezing water, and he tried to jump forward, but Red’s firm hand kept him in place. When he was adjusted enough to the water, Red massaged his scalp and hair until all the conditioner was out.

“Stand up,” Red instructed with a small nudge. With Damian standing, Red dumped a few more buckets of water over his body to completely watch him off, then wrapped him in a towel and lifted him out of the tub.

Damian was horrified when he found himself curing up in Red’s arms into his chest and realized that he was enjoying the nurturing attention of the red assassin.

“You could have gotten badly hurt you know,” Red said, setting Damian down on his bed to dry him off and dress him in his pajamas. He wasn’t scolding, just pointing the facts out.

“I had it under control,” Damian huffed.

“No, you didn’t,” Red said.

Damian looked down, once again finding himself feeling too guilty to meet his teacher’s eyes.

“Why did you get into that fight?” Red asked in a whisper. “Why do you get into any of them? You have nothing to prove to the League.”

“It’s not about the League,” Damian snapped before quickly coming back down. “They say I’m weak. They mock me.”

“Why does it matter what they think?”

“It doesn’t,” Damian balled his fists. “But if they all think I’m weak, what if they tell my grandfather? I know I’m not the perfect child for him. If I fight them, prove I’m stronger than them all,then maybe I can become perfect.”

“You don’t need to be perfect Damian,” Red said.

Damian scoffed, “Easy for you to say.”

“It’s not,” Red shook his head and lifted Damian’s chin with a finger so that he met his eyes. “I may not remember most of my life, but I can remember feelings. I remember how inferior I felt compared to a superior in my past. Someone who’s role I was supposed to fill. I remember how angry and small it made me feel. But above everything else, I was sad.”

“How did you stop feeling like that?” Damian whispered in wonder.

Red smiled, and Damian’s heart stopped. He had never, never, seen Red smile. His mother had claimed Red smiled when he was born, but he had never seen it himself. Despite that, the smile had the same familiar, easing effect that seeing his mother meditate did.

“I realized that the perfect person does not exist, so I should stop wasting my time on trying to be one and just be the best that I could be. I didn’t become better than him, or my adoptive dad, or anyone else around me. I became better than myself,” Red explained. “I’m still becoming better than myself every single day because I have Ms. al Ghul and you. And all you need is us. Not the League and your grandfather.”

“What if I can’t become better than myself?”

“You can. You are. Just by listening to your mother and I, you are becoming better than yourself. But Damian, I need you to hear me when I say, you need to stop trying to be perfect, because the way you are now is more than enough for us. We love every part of you as you are, without you being able to beat assassins twice your size in mortal combat.”

So that’s what I saw in his eyes earlier, Damian thought in awe. Love.

It was all it took for Damian to burst into tears and hug close into the teen’s chest. Red wrapped his arms safely around him and lifted him into his lap.

“What’s wrong Habibi?” Red whispered fearfully. The small pet name his mother called him caused Damian to cry even harder, latching on tightly to the assassin.

“I was dying to hear someone say that I didn’t need to try so hard to be perfect, that I was enough and it was okay,” Damian said, shaking his head.

“It is okay,” Red promised. “Damian, you are great. You are going to do great things. Your mother and I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Damian said, relaxing from his crying fit as quickly as it had come on. “I love you Alwarda.”

“My name is Jason,” Red whispered.

“I love you Jason.”

“I love you too Dami. Let’s get you to bed

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated! They do a lot more than kudos!


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